


Salt Water

by Kalya_Lee



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalya_Lee/pseuds/Kalya_Lee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor takes River to the beach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt Water

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for series 5 and 6, very mild spoilers for series 7.

She changes out of her jeans in her room on the TARDIS, and she smiles, almost indulgently, at the rich burgundy onepiece she finds draped over her bed. Mels would have loved it, all clean lines and sleek cloth and barely-there elastic, and she slips into it without a murmur, patting the wall with amused tenderness and hoping she’s right about who, exactly, picked it out.

_(But then she isn’t Mels, hasn’t been for lifetimes, and right now all she can think about is the adorable gaping-fish reaction that she’ll get from her Oncoming Storm, and how well she now matches his ridiculous bow tie.)_

She wonders where they’re going. Some intergalactic pool in a star system that she’s never heard of, she imagines, or maybe the summer Olympics in 5039. Somewhere relatively harmless, as trips with the Doctor go, if she’s supposed to be wearing a swimsuit. Still, she leaves her shoulder holster on, just to annoy him.

_He probably doesn’t even know that there’s a side door_ , she thinks, smugly, as they land, and stumbles out onto perfect fine white sand.

A beach. He promised her the universe, and he’s taken her to an Earth beach. At least, she _thinks_ it’s an Earth beach. To be fair, plenty of planets have a blue sky and white sand and a rushing, grey-blue ocean, and maybe she hasn’t seen any _(other)_ alien lifeforms yet because there isn’t anyone else here at all, nothing and no one but her and him and their maddening blue box.

He joins her on the sand a minute later, stepping out through the front door in dark red swimming trunks and his favourite red bow tie, and she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry laughing or grab him and throw him down on the sand and hold him very, very tightly. She makes herself look away.

”Hello,” he says, casual and cheerful and querying, as if he hadn't seen her in years, as if he hadn’t planned on meeting her at all, as if he hadn’t just picked her up barely fifteen minutes ago.

_(This is the game they are playing, he realizes. Acting like every hello is their first, like no goodbye will ever be their last. This is the game he plays with all of them, all the people he loves, but she is the one who will play it in return. As if any amount of acting will ever make it true.)_

***

“Hello, sweetie,” she replies, grinning at him. She allows herself another look at her wonderful, impossible man, and raises her eyebrows. “A bowtie, on the beach. Really?”

“Well,” he says, pouting slightly. “You brought a gun.”

She has to laugh at that one. “I thought I’d have to shoot another one of your ridiculous hats off,” with a smirk, because she knows that for all his pouting he probably enjoys it when she does, probably torments her with fezzes and Stetsons because he thinks they make good target practice. For a man who hates guns like he does, he seems incredibly fond of having her shoot at –

Her smirk slips, and he is away from the TARDIS doors and by her side in seconds, gripping both her hands in his, leaning in to look into her eyes. “River,” he says, like there’s nothing else that needs saying, and that’s never true, but then again maybe he really has said it all, before.

_(“you’re forgiven, always and completely forgiven.”)_

_(It’s never going to be enough, not for her.)_

He says it with such tenderness, such tiredness, and she makes herself pretend for a minute that he’s just sick of having to replace his headgear, that he’s chiding her for being trigger-happy and not for hating herself for it, that she doesn’t feel like breaking in a way she’ll ever only break for him.

“But then,” she continues, and her voice shakes, “I decided I’ve been doing a bit too much shooting at you lately.”

“Shooting at me, actually shooting me, not shooting me when you actually really should,” he notes with a shrug, counting on his fingers, all the fire gone from his eyes but one hand still tangled in hers. “I think we’ve done them all, really. Very thorough, aren’t we.” And he smiles at her, gestures at the ocean with their linked hands. “But really, come on, I’ve taken you to the most beautiful place in the universe, and you’re being thorough about _entirely_ the wrong thing. I mean, just smell that sea air!”

There’s a lot of things dancing in his twinkling eyes, and a lot of things behind that he won’t show even her, but at least one of those things is innocent delight. She smiles, slinging her holster off her shoulder and into the sand at her feet.

“You and your bodies of water,” she says, reaching up to knock his bowtie askew. “You have a fixation, sweetie.”

“You bet I do,” he grins, and scoops her up in his arms.

She’s starting to really regret leaving her gun behind when he throws the both of them in the sea. 

***

They pull themselves out of the water and he runs back to the TARDIS for their picnic, which consists mostly of packets of Jammy Dodgers and a bottle of wine that only River touches. She wonders, sometimes, if he ever eats real food. He wonders how she can shoot low-flying droplets of claret if she’s meant to be inebriated.

“So, I met you the other day,” she says, languidly, fixing him with her most mysterious smile. “Almost didn’t recognize you. Skinny bloke, pinstriped, really funny shoes.” She looks down at their bare feet, coated in a layer of sand, and laughs. “And the _hair_! Let me tell you, sweetie, your hair,” and she grabs a bit of his fringe, ignoring his batting hands, “you need to do something about your hair. You can’t go from one body to another and still have _funny hair_.”

“You’re one to talk,” he snorts, and grabs one of her curls. He spends the next five minutes trying to sonic it straight, and she knows she loves him because she lets him, and doesn’t even hurt his pride by telling him which setting it _should_ be on, if he actually wants it to work.

_(He knows, actually, but he likes her hair the way it is.)_

_(She likes his, too, but she likes laughing at it more.)_

“Anyway,” she says, once he’s put his screwdriver away, “I was just having a walk, you know, testing out my new Manipulator, freaking out my guards, the usual, and who do I bump into? You. And I didn’t even get shot at, not once. Real treat. You looked _awful_ , by the way, why was that?”

He doesn’t reply, not at first, takes another biscuit. His slow, deliberate chewing echoes the beating of her heart, and it makes her smile and throws her off enough that it takes her a full two minutes before she jabs him in the solar plexus.

He yelps. She smirks. “ _What?_ ”

“Stop ignoring me, sweetie. It’s not going to work.”

“I’m not _ignoring_ you! Look,” and he thrusts the packet of biscuits at her. “I’m offering you food!”

She won’t even dignify that with a response.

“Oh,” he says, after a while, looking sheepish. “that. Not sure, don’t really remember.” He stretches out in the sand beside her, squints at the sun. He won’t look her in the eye, so she doesn’t try.

_(He remembers that day, remembers it exactly, every minute, every second. He’d just lost Donna, and Rose was gone again, with him-but-not-him, and he’d just wanted to get away. He’d never planned on running into anyone he knew, and not_ her _, not so soon after he’d watched her –_

_He’d needed her then, needed her sarcasm and her indulgent look and her fascination with his hair. He’d needed someone who could prove to him that the people he loved could, maybe, come back. He’d needed her, and he’d found her, like he always did, whether he was looking or not._

_He’s never thanked the old girl for that. He makes a mental note.)_

The silence drags between them, a long quiet that’s both warm and uncomfortable. He looks at her, sidelong, not turning. She’s still watching him, that enigmatic smile that he loves so much still on her lips.

He can trust her.

“Donna Noble,” he says, finally. “My companion, Donna. Absolutely brilliant woman, and a ginger, would you believe? She never let me get away with anything,” he turns to face her, knitting his brow, scrutinizing. “She was a little like you, really.”

“I think I’d have liked her,” she says.

“You will.”

_(You did.)_

“So, did you have a fight or what? Nicked her hairspray one time too many?” She’s trying to make him laugh. After a minute, she hands him the wine bottle, and he takes a swig and manages not to spit it back out.

“No, I, uh,” he closes his eyes, and she stares at him. He looks so young, with his eyes closed, young and soft in pale skin and his grandfather’s bow tie. So much of his age is in the eyes, she realizes, and without them he looks so fragile.

_(She wonders what she looks like with her eyes closed. Strong, she’ll bet, with her lion’s mane of hair and her strong jaw and whipcord muscles. She thinks it’s unfair, how she looks so much stronger than he does, when only the opposite will ever true.)_

“Doctor,” she says, in that tone of voice that says _don’t lie to me_ , even though the tone is irrelevant. She never calls him Doctor unless she has to.

“She had my mind,” he says, and sits up violently, like having his mind would be such a horrible, disgusting thing. “This, this – this _thing_ ,” and he jabs at his head so angrily that she wants to hold him down and tell him to _stop_ ,  “this _mind_ , it’s useful to _me,_ but her, it was burning her up. I had to take it out of her, and she…. She forgot me.”

His voice wavers on the last few words. His voice never wavers. She wants to hold him and let him weep, cry all over her burgundy swimsuit, but he never will. He takes another Jammy Dodger, and she looks away to let him breathe.

***

“So you were alone,” she says, a while later, because the rest is unimportant, and though her heart breaks for this woman she’s never met, Donna isn’t a priority, not to her, not like he is.

“Yes,” he says, so quietly she can barely hear.

“And you, now,” she whispers, “After mom and….”

_(No, she can’t, it still hurts too much)_

“…. After Amy and Rory, after they…. You’re alone now, aren’t you.” It’s not a question.

He answers, anyway. “Oh, River,” he says, and finally, finally, he looks her in the eye. “I’ve still got you.”

***

“I would remember you, you know,” she says, as they watch the sun set over the water.

_(It’s definitely_ the _sun, her sun, as it glows yellow and orange and red and purple over the bright blue sea. Her sun. She likes to think, when she’s feeling sentimental, that at some point in the last nine hundred years it’s become his sun too.)_

He laughs, flicking her nose. “Of course you would.”

“No,” she says, because this is _important_ , “I mean, I would remember you, no matter what. I’d die rather than have never met you. I’m always going to have this, Doctor,” she says, eyes searching. “I’d never lose a moment. I’d _die_.”

“I know,” he says, and he does. He does.

_(He doesn’t want to talk about it.)_

 “Would you, though,” he asks, turning away from her to watch a flash of brilliant red fade to blue. “If someone _made_ you, if _I_ made you, would I really be that hard to forget?”

“Sweetie,” she says, laughing. “I was raised to _kill_ you. I think I owe you a bit of memory.”

He winces at that. “Yes, well, I keep surviving, though, so. By the way,” and here’s his smile, the smile that makes him look about seven, the smile that she fell in love with, “you’re a really _pants_ killer, did you know that?”

She flicks sand at him, and he throws his last biscuit at her. She catches it between her teeth and grins.

“Well,” between bites, “besides that, though, you did promise me the universe, and boy, have you _delivered_. Star systems being born, planets dying, running through field after corridor after prison hallway, singing towers in – say,” she looks at him, and for once, somehow, misses his flinch.

_(No, please, River, not now.)_

“You never did take me to see those singing towers. Did you destroy them or something? I always knew you were a bad boy.”

“Nah,” he says, looking away. “I just didn’t think they were up to much. Not worth our time, really.”

_(There’s a time, he knows, for everything to end, but not this. Not now. Just not now, not tomorrow, not in a hundred years. He can put it off, he will. Time is flexible.)_

“Oh, come on, sweetie,” she says, “you did promise. And we’ve got all the time in the world.”

_(They don’t, he thinks. We don’t, River, stop saying that. Please.)_

“Maybe next time,” he says.

_(There’s a time for everything to end, but not now. Please, not now.)_

His eyes are red. They’re red and they’re wet and she aches for him, she doesn’t know what’s wrong but she aches.

“Doctor?”

_(She wants to kiss him, right now, so badly, but such horrible things happen when they kiss.)_

“Nothing,” he says, and she always, she always knows when he’s lying. “Just got some salt water in my eye.”

The sun drops over the water, finally, the last bit of orange dips and the sky is blue again, TARDIS blue.

The Doctor turns, looks up at the stars. In the deepening dark, River takes his hand.

 

**Author's Note:**

> My first Whofic! I hope you enjoyed it. :) I was never really a Doctor/River shipper at first, but I just love their chemistry, and in an attempt to stay sane and minimize emotional damage I have adopted the mantra that the writers' word is canon, so.
> 
> As my beloved beta Prodafish is not a Who fan, this fic is sadly unbeta-ed. I apologise for any and all mistakes. If anyone is willing to beta for me I offer you my deepest gratitude. :)


End file.
